


Closing Time

by aosav



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Baker Tanaka, F/M, Meet-Cute, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-27 00:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9935462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosav/pseuds/aosav
Summary: Tanaka is closing up the bakery for the day when he witnesses an attempted mugging.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For HarmoniousDestruction’s Haikyuu!! Week on Tumblr.  
> Day Four: Tanaka-centric. Prompts: fight, comfort, bakery au.

Tanaka loves closing time. He loves when the bakery is open, too – the bustle of customers, the chiming of the bell above the door, seeing his regulars, selling cakes and cupcakes and still-warm cookies for birthday parties and afternoon treats – but the quiet of closing time is – it’s just –

Peaceful.

He’s always loved a ruckus, but when the sun has gone down and all the counters are wiped clean and there’s nothing left to do but lock the door and go home for the night before he gets up at five a.m. to start baking for a new day of business, Tanaka feels peaceful. There is something super satisfying about knowing that the day is over and everything is in order.

Well. Almost everything is in order.

Tanaka looks up from his keys, poised in front of the lock on the bakery’s back door, at the noise coming from the far side of the street. Two people are standing just outside of the circle of light that the nearest streetlamp casts. They look almost like they’re dancing, which is a bit odd, but Tanaka has seen much stranger things in this city.

What’s really odd, though, is that one of them pushes the other away and then takes off down the street. When the pusher passes under the next streetlamp down, Tanaka sees that he is clutching a purse to his chest and glancing behind him. Not dancing, then – struggling.

“Hey, you!” Tanaka shouts. He takes off after the guy, leaving the bakery unlocked for the moment.

The victim – presumably a woman – is also giving chase, closing the gap between themselves and the purse-snatcher very quickly. Tanaka is still a fair ways away when the two collide, stumble into another halo of light, and then abruptly drop to the ground with a cry.

Tanaka puts on a burst of speed. “Hey!” he shouts again.

The man – he can now see that it is a man and a woman struggling – gets to his feet and tries to run again, but the woman jumps up too and grabs his arm. As the man is spun around to face the woman, she draws her arm back and then drives her fist into his face with what looks like an impressive amount of force. The man stumbles again, tearing out of the woman’s grip, and drops the purse. The woman lifts her arm again, and the man takes off running.

Tanaka has only just reached where the woman is standing when she stoops to pick up her purse. He’s breathing hard from sprinting – so is she.

“Hey,” he pants out, skidding to a stop a few feet away from her, “you okay?”

The woman looks up. She looks surprised, like she hadn’t even noticed Tanaka shouting and dashing over to help. She’s holding the hand that she used to punch the purse-snatcher close to her chest and clutching her purse with her other hand. Even with her hair in disarray and her expression pinched in discomfort, she is stunningly beautiful.

“I’m fine,” she says. Her voice is stunningly beautiful, too. Then she smiles, and that –

“Wow.”

Tanaka snaps his mouth closed. He did not mean to say that out loud. Now she’s going to think he’s some kind of creepy pervert, ogling her in the street. He’s no better than the purse-snatcher.

“Sorry?” the woman says. She stares at him, her expression curious.

“No, I’m sorry,” Tanaka says, shaking his head. “I –”

“I appreciate you coming to help,” the woman cuts in, saving Tanaka from a rather embarrassing apology. She reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, but winces when her fingers brush against her head.

“Are you hurt?” Tanaka asks. He eyes her hand. The light isn’t great right here, but her fingers look like they might be a bit bloody. Either she hit that guy hard enough to make him bleed, or she was injured in the struggle. “Do you want me to call someone?” Tanaka asks. “The police?”

“Oh, no, thank you.” The woman shakes her head. A wave of dark hair falls into her face and she goes to brush it aside again, but this time she stops herself. She holds her hand up and examines it in the watery light from the streetlamp.

There is definitely blood.

“Are you sure?” Tanaka asks. “It looks like you hurt your hand.”

“I think it happened when I hit him,” the woman says. She flexes her fingers, wincing a bit but demonstrating that at least none of her fingers seem to be broken. “I’ll be fine,” she says, looking up at Tanaka again. “But thank you.” Then she smiles again – it is just as stunning the second time around.

“I have ice,” Tanaka blurts out.

The woman stares at him.

Tanaka blushes. Now he seems like a pervert _and_ an idiot.

“I mean,” he says, hurriedly, “if you want some ice for your hand, I have some. In my bakery. Which is right over there.” He waves one hand behind him, in the general direction of his bakery.

“Oh,” the woman says. “That would be nice, actually.”

“Great,” Tanaka says. He’s staring, he realizes, so he turns quickly away from her, towards the bakery. “It’s just over here,” he mumbles, gesturing towards it again.

The woman walks towards him, cradling her hand against her chest again. Tanaka immediately starts walking towards the bakery.

Neither of them say a word as the woman follows him to the bakery’s back door. Tanaka sticks the key into the lock and twists to unlock it, turns the handle – or tries to, rather – and then remembers that he didn’t lock the door before, so just now he locked instead of unlocked it. Strike two on his “looking like an idiot in front of the pretty girl” tally. He shoves the key back into the lock and unlocks the door, hoping that she didn’t notice. When he glances at her, she is looking around the street, but she might just be being polite by pretending not to notice his little fumble. She seems like the type to be polite like that.

“The ice is just in the kitchen,” Tanaka says, opening the door. He gestures for her to enter first, which she does, and then follows her inside. He turns the lights on before he closes the door, illuminating the store room. “Through there,” he tells her, pointing at the door at the other end of the room.

The woman nods and makes her way carefully through the mess of boxes, opened and unopened, and spare chairs that are stacked in slightly dangerous looking towers throughout the room. Tanaka has been meaning to tidy this room up, but, well, it isn’t exactly high on his to-do list. Since his business manager quit, he’s been a bit overwhelmed with trying to do all of the baking while also running the business end of things, not to mention running the register with his clerks during the busy hours. Tidying up has kind of fallen through the cracks lately.

“In here?” the woman checks, pausing with her uninjured hand – the one holding her purse – on the door into the kitchen.

“Yeah, the kitchen’s right through there,” Tanaka affirms.

The woman pushes through the door and Tanaka follows her.

Fortunately, the kitchen is spotless. A messy backroom is one thing, but a messy kitchen is another. Tanaka _bakes_ in here – anything less than spotlessness is completely unacceptable.

“You can sit, if you want,” Tanaka offers, gesturing to the stool over by one of the counters.

The woman sits down and Tanaka fetches a hand towel from the rack by the sink and then a handful of ice from the freezer. He makes up an ice pack and hands it over. She smiles when she takes it – her smile is not getting any less gorgeous with repetition, that’s for sure – and their fingers brush a bit. Tanaka’s fingers are very cold, from the freezer, and he shoves them into his pockets self-consciously.

“Thank you,” the woman says. She sets her purse on the floor so that she can use her uninjured hand to hold the ice pack onto her injured hand.

“It’s no trouble,” Tanaka says. It really isn’t. Closing time is usually really relaxing and all, but he doesn’t mind the break from routine. He couldn’t possibly mind anything as long as she keeps smiling at him.

“So who’s Seako?” the woman asks.

Tanaka blinks at her. “What?”

The woman nods at a stack of napkins that is sitting on the counter, all printed with the bakery’s name on them: Saeko's Sweet Tooth.

“Oh,” Tanaka says. Another strike in the idiot column. “My sister. She loaned me the money to start this place, and instead of charging me interest she wanted me to name it after her, so I did.”

“That’s really sweet,” the woman says. She smiles, gently this time, not like she’s being polite but like she really does think that it’s sweet. It’s ridiculously charming.

“I’m Ryuunosuke,” Tanaka blurts. “Just, ah, since we haven’t introduced ourselves.”

“I’m Kiyoko,” the woman says. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Tanaka echoes. He isn’t sure what else to say. He wants to say _something_ – he wants to make brilliant conversation and dazzle her with his wit and charm – but he doesn’t know what. “So –” he starts, just as she says, “Do –” and they both break off.

“Sorry,” Kiyoko says.

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Tanaka rushes out. “What were you going to say?”

“I was just going to ask what time you normally close,” Kiyoko says. “You seem to be closed now?” Her voice goes up a bit, into a question, at the end, and she glances towards the door that leads into the front room of the bakery, which is dark.

“Yeah, I closed up about an hour ago,” Tanaka says. “I was just locking up when I heard you – well. You know.”

“Getting mugged,” Kiyoko supplies.

“Yeah,” Tanaka says. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call the police or something?” He really feels like he should call the police. He’s also kind of worried about her hand.

“I didn’t get a good look at him, so it won’t do any good,” Kiyoko says, shaking her head. “And he didn’t hurt me, so it isn’t a big deal.”

“Your hand is bleeding!” Tanaka protests. There wasn’t a ton of blood, but there was more than enough to make him worry. He’s not a fan of blood.

Kiyoko lifts the ice pack off of her hand. Her knuckles are bloody but not bleeding anymore. The skin is banged up but it doesn’t look as serious as Tanaka was afraid of. Kiyoko wiggles her fingers, staring down at them.

“I’ve had worse in class,” she says, calmly. “I’ll be as good as new in a few days.”

“What kind of class is that?” Tanaka asks. Maybe she’s training to be a cop or something. That would explain how she was able to take that guy down like that.

“I teach self-defense-focused mixed martial arts at the wellness complex down the road,” Kiyoko says, gesturing in the direction of the complex.

Tanaka knows where that is; he runs by it every morning and laughs at the fools who actually pay to exercise. He didn’t know they did martial arts and stuff there, too.

“That’s really cool,” he says. He’s never known anyone who taught martial arts before. Then he realizes – “You really didn’t need my help with that guy, then, huh.” That’s another idiot mark: leaping to the rescue of someone who very much did not need his help at all. Tonight is not his best showing.

“Not really, no,” Kiyoko says, a bit hesitantly, as if _she’s_ the one who should be embarrassed by that. “It was really nice of you to try to help, though.”

“It was really cool how you took him down,” Tanaka says back. He’ll just move the conversation along to less embarrassing grounds. “How long have you been teaching martial arts?”

“A few months now,” Kiyoko says. She reaches up to brush her hair out of her face, pausing and then switching hands to use her uninjured one. “It’s temporary until I can find another job in my field. I was downsized.”

“That sucks,” Tanaka says. One of the many benefits of running his own business is that he never has to worry about being fired; if the bakery stops doing well, he’ll just go bankrupt instead. “What did you do before?” he asks.

“I’m actually a business manager by training,” Kiyoko says.

Tanaka stares at her.

“What?” Kiyoko asks. She brushes her hair behind her ear again, even though it wasn’t in her face at all.

“I just lost my business manager,” Tanaka says. “He moved away to be closer to his family. I’ve been meaning to put an ad out to find a replacement, but I haven’t been able to get around to it because I’ve been so busy doing – well, managing the business.”

Kiyoko laughs.

Tanaka is pretty sure the sound is unearthly – only angels should be able to make sounds like that.

“Maybe us meeting tonight was fate,” Kiyoko says, smiling.

“Yeah,” Tanaka says. He feels his own smile stretch across his face as they stare at each other. He’s never put much stock in fate, but, hey, if this is fate, then he’s more than happy to give it its due.

“Do you know what,” Kiyoko says, thoughtfully. She sets the ice pack down on the counter and leans towards Tanaka. Tanaka leans towards her as well, mesmerized by the delight that is dancing in her eyes and along her lips. Kiyoko laughs softly – just a huff of air – as she says, “I’m actually glad that I got mugged tonight.”

And Tanaka doesn’t think at all as he says, “Me too,” and only realizes a second later how awful and idiotic that sounds.

Kiyoko is giggling, though, looking at him with nothing but amusement in her gray eyes, not offended at all.

Maybe tonight is just a night for looking like an idiot. Maybe that’s the price of fate – looking like an idiot to end up exactly where you need to be. As far as tradeoffs go, it’s not too bad.

Not too bad at all.


End file.
